Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1526114
30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2024 nectors. is puts stencil printers through a lot of challenges because you need either step stencils or you need to find a solder paste com- promise for the complete PCB. However, with a jet printer, we have the possibility to solve this. e jet printer itself is built on a high-per- forming gantry system and a printhead capa- ble of depositing ultra-small droplets: one to two nanoliters, up to 300 times per second (300 Hertz). is means one million dots per hour or even more. is combination makes jet printing technology perfect for random dot dispensing. In 2005, with the MY500, the goal was to replace stencil printing. We're not there yet fully. Stencil printing has its place when it comes to printing speed—like in a placement machine, the jet printer goes from pad to pad, shooting solder paste deposits on the fly. Nevertheless, market demand for jet printing is on the rise due to the increasingly challeng- ing characteristics of PCBs. Some large auto- motive electronics manufacturers are looking into this because their EV boards have bigger component variety. Now they are combining stencil print and jet print to bring all the advan- tages together. The need seems to be moving toward surgically applying the solder paste where you need it, to the thicknesses that are needed. Clearly, component trends are driv- ing this need. Components are simultane- ously becoming very small, and on the other end of the spectrum, BGAs are starting to move toward 100 millimeters a side with thousands of solder balls underneath. In the beginning, jet printing was mainly done by small shops and prototypers. If I have a lot of changeovers from one product to another, I always need a different stencil. Now, I'm in a stencil-free environment, so this has a pos- itive effect on the time to market. Many big accounts have a jet printer in their prototyp- ing department, and now we are bringing jet printing to the line to answer the challenges they have in volume production. How are companies moving from prototyping to production for jetting of solder paste? What has jet printing R&D been doing to reach the throughput numbers that high- volume production would want? Typically, when discussing an add-on sce- nario, I have a stencil printer in front to do the easy printing. en, I can add a jet printer to add paste where needed or to print more com- plicated structures. at works well. Meanwhile, Mycronic also has its own sten- cil printer, MYPro S, and we are working on our own solution. We have placed jet printing at some big customers, working with whatever stencil printer they already had. We are trying to improve the application. For example, some big automotive customers approached us and said, "I have this big power socket, which defi- nitely needs much more paste. But next to it I have 0402 or 0201 components, and this is just not possible, even with the step stencils." Are you suggesting you could do jetting on top of what you just stencil-printed to create the thicknesses or structures in the solder paste you need? Wolfgang Heinecke